Jerome decided that he would not go to see Lucina Merritt that Sunday
night. He knew that she expected him, though there had been no formal
agreement to that effect; he knew that she would wonder at his
non-appearance, and, even though she were not disappointed, that she
would think him untruthful and unmannerly.
"Let her," he told himself, harshly, fairly scourging himself with
his resolution. "Let her think just as badly of me as she can. I'll
get over it quicker."
The ineffable selfishness of martyrdom was upon him. He considered
only his own glory and pain of noble renunciation, and not her agony
of disillusion and distrust, even if she did not care for him. That
last possibility he did not admit for a moment. In the first place,
though he had loved her almost at first sight, the counter-reasoning
he did not imagine could apply to her. It had been as simple and
natural in his case as looking up at a new star, but in hers--what
was there in him to arrest her sweet eyes and consideration, at a
moment's notice, if at all? As well expect the star to note a new eye
of admiration upon the earth.
In all probability, Lucina's heart had turned already to Lawrence
Prescott, as was fitting. She had doubtless seen much of him--he was
handsome and prosperous; both families would be pleased with such a
match. Jerome faced firmly the jealousy in his heart. "You've got to
get used to it," he told himself.
He did not think much of his sister in this connection, but simply
decided that his mother, and possibly Elmira, had overrated Lawrence
Prescott's attention, and jumped too hastily at conclusions. It was
incredible that any one should fancy his sister in preference to
Lucina. Lawrence had merely called in a friendly way. He did not once
imagine any such feeling on Elmira's part for young Prescott, as on
his for Lucina, and had at the time more impatience than pity.
However, he resolved to remonstrate if Lawrence should stay so late
again with his sister.
"She may think he means more than he does, girls are so silly," he
said. He did not class Lucina Merritt among girls.
That Sunday night, after dark, though he was resolved not to visit
Lucina, he strolled up the road, past her house. There was no light
in the parlor. "She doesn't expect me, after all," he thought, but
with a great pang of disappointment rather than relief. He judged
such proceedings from the rustic standpoint. Always in Upham, when a
girl expected a young man to come to spend an evening with her, she
lighted the best parlor and entertained him there in isolation from
the rest of her family. He did not know how different a training in
such respects Lucina had had. She never thought, since he was not her
avowed lover, of sequestering herself with him in the best parlor.
She would have been too proudly and modestly fearful as to what he
might think of her, and she of herself, and her parents of them both.
She expected, as a matter of course, to invite him into the
sitting-room, where were her father and mother and Colonel Jack
Lamson.
However, she permitted herself a little innocent manoeuvre, whereby
she might gain a few minutes of special converse with him without the
presence of her elders. A little before dusk Lucina seated herself on
the front door-step. Her mother brought presently a little shawl and
feared lest she take cold, but Lucina said she should not remain
there long, and there was no wind and no dampness.
Lucina felt uneasy lest she be deceiving her mother, but she could
not bring herself to tell her, though she did not fairly know why,
that she expected a caller.
The dusk gathered softly, like the shadow of brooding wings. She
thought Jerome must come very soon. She could just see a glimmer of
white road through the trees, and she watched that eagerly, never
taking her eyes from it. Now and then she heard an approaching
footstep, and a black shadow slanted athwart the road. Her heart
sank, though she wondered at it, when that happened.
When Jerome came up the road she made sure at once that it was he.
She even stirred to greet him, but after an indefinable pause he
passed on also; then she thought she had been mistaken.
He saw the flutter of pale drapery on the door-step, but never
dreamed that Lucina was actually there watching for him. After a
while he went back. Lucina, who was still sitting there, saw him
again, but this time did not stir, since he was going the other way.
When, at half-past eight, she saw the people from the evening
prayer-meeting passing on the road, she made sure that Jerome would
not come that night.
She gave a soft sigh, leaned her head back against the fluted
door-post, and tried to recall every word he had said to her, and
every word she had said to him, about his coming. She began to wonder
if she had possibly not been cordial enough, if she could have made
him fear he would not be welcome. She repeated over and over, trying
to imagine him in her place as listener, all she had said to him. She
gave it the furthest inflections of graciousness and coolness of
which she could have been capable, and puzzled sorely as to which she
had used.
"It makes so much difference as to how you say a thing," thought poor
Lucina, "and I know I was afraid lest he think me too glad to have
him come. I wonder if I did not say enough, or did not say it
pleasantly."
It did not once occur to Lucina that Jerome might mean to slight her,
and might stay away because he wished to do so. She had been so
petted and held precious and desirable during her whole sweet life,
that she could scarcely imagine any one would flout her, though so
timid and fearful of hurting and being hurt was she by nature, that
without so much love and admiration she would have been a piteous
thing.
She decided that it must be her fault that Jerome had not come. She
reflected that he was very proud; she remembered, and the memory
stung her with something of the old pain of the happening, how he
would not take the cakes when she was a child, how he would not take
her money to buy shoes. She shrank even then, remembering the flash
with which he had turned upon her.
"I did not say enough, I was so afraid of saying too much, and that
is why he has not come," she told herself, and sadly troubled her
gentle heart thereby.
The tears came into her eyes and rolled slowly down her fair cheeks
as she sat there in the dusk. She did not yet feel towards Jerome as
he towards her. She had been too young and childish when she had
known him for love to have taken fast root in her heart; and she was
not one to love fully until she felt her footing firm, and her place
secure in a lover's affections. Still, who can tell what may be in
the heart of the gentlest and most transparent little girl, who
follows obediently at her mother's apron-strings? In those old days
when Abigail had put her little daughter to bed, heard her say her
prayers for forgiveness of her sins of innocence, and blessings upon
those whom she loved best, then kissed the fair baby face sunken in
its white pillow, she never dreamed what happened after she had gone
down-stairs. Every night, for a long time after she had first spoken
to Jerome, did the small Lucina, her heart faintly stirred into
ignorant sweetness with the first bloom of young romance, slip out of
her bed after her mother had gone, kneel down upon her childish
knees, and ask another blessing for Jerome Edwards.
"Please, God, bless that boy, and give him shoes and gingerbread,
because he won't take them from me," Lucina used to pray, then climb
into bed again with a little wild scramble of hurry.
Sometimes, when she was a little girl, though her mother never knew
it, Lucina used to be thinking about Jerome, and building artless
air-castles when she bent her grave childish brow over her task of
needle-work. Sometimes, on the heights of these castles reared by her
innocent imagination, she and Jerome put arms around each other's
necks and embraced and kissed, and her mother sat close by and did
not know.
She also did not know that often, when she had curled Lucina's hair
with special care on the Sabbath day, and dressed her in her best
frock, that her little daughter, demurely docile under her maternal
hands, was eagerly wondering if Jerome would not think her pretty in
her finery.
Of course, when Lucina was grown up, and went away to school, these
childish love-dreams seemed quite lost and forgotten, in her
awakening under the light of older life. In those latter days Lucina
had never thought about Jerome Edwards. She had even, perhaps, had
her heart touched, at least to a fancy of love, by the admiration of
others. It was whispered in the village that Lucina Merritt had had
chances already. However, if she had, she had waved them back upon
the donors before they had been fairly given, with that gentlest
compassion which would permit no need of itself. Lucina, however her
heart might have been swerved for a season to its natural inclination
of love, had never yet admitted a lover, for, when it came to that
last alternative of open or closed doors, she had immediately been
seized with an impulse of flight into her fastness of childhood and
maidenhood.
But now, though she scarcely loved Jerome as yet, the power of her
old dreams was over her again. No one can over-estimate the tendency
of the human soul towards old ways of happiness which it has not
fully explored.
Lucina had begun, almost whether she would or not, to dream again
those old sweet dreams, whose reality she had never yet tasted. Had
life ever broken in upon the dreams, had a word or a caress ever
become a fact, it is probable she would have looked now upon it all
as upon some childish fruit of delight, whose sweetness she had
proved and exhausted to insipidity. And this, with no disparagement
to her, for the most faithful heart is in youth subject to growth and
change, and not free as to the exercise of its own faithfulness.
Lucina that Sunday evening had put on one of her prettiest muslin
frocks, cross-barred with fine pink flowers set between the bars. She
tied a pink ribbon around her waist, too, and wore her morocco shoes.
She looked down at the crisp flow of muslin over her knees, and
thought if Jerome had known that she had put on that pretty dress, he
would have been sure she wanted him to come. Still, she would not
have liked him to know she had taken as much pains as that, but she
wished so she had invited him more cordially to come.
The tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on the fair triangle of
neck between the folds of her lace tucker; she was weeping for
Jerome's hurt, but it seemed strangely like her own. She was
half-minded to go into the house and tell her mother all about it,
repeat that miserable little dialogue between herself and Jerome,
which was troubling her so, and let her decide as to whether she had
been lacking in hospitality or not, and give her advice. But she
could not quite bring herself to do that.
The moon arose behind the house, she could not see it, but she knew
it was there by the swarming of pale lights under the pine-trees, and
the bristling of their tops as with needles of silver. She heard a
whippoorwill in the distance calling as from some undiscovered
country; there was an undertone of frogs from marshy meadows swelling
and dying in even cadences of sound.
Lucina's mother came to the door and put her hand on the girl's head.
"You must come in," she said; "your hair feels quite damp. You will
take cold. Your dress is thin, too."
Lucina rose obediently and followed her mother into the sitting-room,
where sat Squire Eben and Colonel Lamson in swirling clouds of
tobacco smoke.
Lucina's cheeks had a wonderful clear freshness of red and white from
the damp night air. There were no traces of tears on her sweet blue
eyes. She came into the bright room with a smiling shrinking from the
light, which gave her the expression of an angel. Both men gazed at
her with a sort of passion of tenderest admiration, and also a
certain sadness of yearning--the Squire because of that instinct of
insecurity and possibility of loss to which possession itself gives
rise, the Colonel because of the awakening of old vain longings in
his own heart.
The Squire reached out a hand towards Lucina, caught her first by her
flowing skirt, then by her fair arm, and drew her close to his side
and pulled down her soft face to his. "Well, Pretty, how goes the
world?" he said, with a laugh, which had almost the catch of a sob,
so anxiously tender he was of her, and so timid before his own
delight in her.
When she had kissed him and bade him good-night, Lucina went up to
her own chamber and her mother with her.
"Abigail follows the child, since she came home, like a hen with one
chicken," the Squire said, smiling almost foolishly in his utter
pride of this beautiful daughter.
The Colonel nodded, frowning gravely over his pipe at the opposite
window. "She makes me think a little of my wife at her age," he said.
The Squire started. It was the first time he had ever heard the
Colonel mention his wife. He sighed, looked at him, and hesitated
with a delicacy of reticence. "It must have been a hard blow," he
ventured, finally.
The Colonel nodded.
"Any children?" asked the Squire, after a little.
"No," replied Colonel Lamson. He puffed at his pipe, his face was
redder than usual. "Well, Eben," he said, after a pause, during which
the two men smoked energetically, "I hope you'll keep her a while."
"You don't think she looks delicate?" cried the Squire, turning pale.
"Her mother doesn't think so."
The Colonel laughed heartily. "When a girl blossoms out like that
there'll be plenty trying the garden-gate," said he.
The Squire flushed angrily. "Let 'em try it and be damned!" he said.
"You can't lock the gate, Eben; if you do, she'll open it herself,
and no blame to her."
"She won't, I tell you. She's too young, and there's not a man I know
fit to tie her little shoes."
"How's young Prescott?"
"Young Prescott be damned!"
The Colonel hesitated. He had seen with an eye, sharpened with long
and thorough experience, Jerome Edwards and Lucina the night of the
party. "How's that young Edwards?"
Squire Merritt stared. "The smartest young fellow in this town," he
said, with a kind of crusty loyalty, "but when it comes to
Lucina--Lucina!"
"I've liked that boy, Eben, ever since that night in Robinson's
store," said the Colonel, with a curious gravity.
"So have I," returned the Squire, defiantly, "and before that--ever
since his father died. He was the bravest little rascal. He's a hero
in his way. I was telling Lucina the other day what he'd done. But
when it comes to his lifting his eyes to her, to her--by the Lord
Harry, Jack, nobody shall have her, rich or poor, good or bad. I
don't care if he's a prince, or an angel from heaven. Don't I know
what men are? I'm going to keep my angel of a child a while myself.
I'll tell you one thing, sir, and that is, Lucina thinks more to-day
of her old father than any man living; I'll bet you a thousand she
does!" Squire Eben's voice fairly broke with loving emotion and
indignation.
"Can't take you up, Eben," said the Colonel, dryly; "I'd be too
darned sure to lose, and I couldn't pay a dollar; but--to-morrow's
coming."
Squire Eben Merritt stood looking at his friend, a frown of jealous
reverie on his open face. Suddenly, with no warning, as if from a
sudden uplifting of the spirit, it cleared away. He laughed out his
great hearty laugh. "Well, by the Lord Harry, Jack," said he, "when
the girl does lose her heart, though I hope it won't be for many a
day yet, if it's to a good man that can take care of her and fight
for her when he's gone, her old father won't stand in the way. Lucina
always did have what she wanted, and she always shall."